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Corpun file 8740 at www.corpun.com
The Straits Times, Singapore, 7 March 2002
Vicious trio get jail, cane for revenge attack
THE court yesterday made an example of three men who had taken part in a fatal secret-society revenge attack, by giving them stiff sentences to discourage people from joining such societies.
Each of them was jailed 10 years and will receive 12 strokes of the cane.
They are See Seng Lok, 33, Goh Weng Soon, 27, a vegetable seller, and Shau Soon Kia, 23, who is jobless.
Secret-society gangsters (from left) Goh, See and Shau were sentenced to 10 years, 12 strokes.
Their lawyer, Mr Kelvin Lim, tried to distance them from their friend, Chua Soon Hock, who had dealt the victim, Mr Tan Lai Kim, 22, the fatal blow.
But the judge said that the three were just as 'culpable' as Chua, a 22-year-old doing full-time national service.
Judicial Commissioner Choo Han Teck made it plain that he agreed with the prosecutors that membership in secret societies has to be 'discouraged vigorously'.
The men had attacked Mr Tan and his friends with knives and wooden poles in May 1998.
Mr Tan was slashed in his left leg and a major artery was severed, killing him.
In their call for a stiff sentence, Deputy Public Prosecutors Wong Kok Weng and Paul Chia said people need to be protected from the violence of secret-society members.
The revenge attack, in which deadly weapons were used, was vicious, premeditated and carefully planned, they argued.
The men were not 'passive onlookers'. They had actively taken part in the fight, the prosecutors said.
The attack on May 4, 1998 was in retaliation for a beating Shau received three days earlier from Mr Tan and his friends for having a fling with the girlfriend of one of Mr Tan's gang members.
Shau and his gangster friends attacked Mr Tan and his friends at a coffeeshop in Cheong Chin Nam Road, off Upper Bukit Timah Road.
After the fight, all four fled to Malaysia.
But Chua, who slashed Mr Tan's artery, was caught the following year and jailed for 10 years. He also received 18 strokes of the cane.
The other three, including Shau, returned last September.
Last Friday, each of them pleaded guilty to culpable homicide not amounting to murder, while being part of an unlawful assembly that intended to cause hurt with deadly weapons.
Corpun file 8749 at www.corpun.com
The Straits Times, Singapore, 14 March 2002
Robber said sorry to victim, and went on a spree
THE first time 26-year-old Donny Lee Kok Meng robbed a shop, he said sorry to the victim, the 41-year-old owner of a boutique in Chinatown Point.
Whether he did so because he was robbing her or because he had slashed her fingers accidentally with the paper cutter he threatened her with, is not clear.
Having apologised, he removed $1,000 from her shop's cash register and left quickly.
After that first successful attempt at robbery last April 8, Lee used his paper cutter to hold up more shops.
In the next six months, the unemployed man brandished his weapon in at least four other shops and made off with another $5,000 in cash and mobile phones that belonged to his victims.
He would choose shops with young salesgirls.
Among the shops he robbed were boutiques in the shopping centres Plaza Singapura and Orchard Emerald.
He would go in pretending to ask for change, then whip out the cutter.
He would threaten the salesgirls with it, then help himself to cash and products.
He also took one salegirl's ATM card, which he used to withdraw $2,000 from her bank account.
In October, Lee got a job as a mobile-phone sales promoter. But instead of selling the phones, he pocketed them, then claimed that he had 'lost' them so he could get replacements.
In total, he pocketed five mobile phones worth a total of about $2,500.
Yesterday, Lee, who has been stealing things since he was 15 years old, was sentenced to 14 years of corrective training and the maximum 24 strokes of the cane for armed robbery.
Copyright © 2002 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.
Corpun file 8776 at www.corpun.com
The Straits Times, Singapore, 20 March 2002
Phony psychiatrist molests victim in car
A SEXUAL predator convinced a 20-year-old woman that he was a psychiatrist, then after she told him about having had an abortion, persuaded her to let him do a check on her.
Mohamed Raffi Mohamed Kunju, 32, who was posing as a foreigner doing research here, approached his victim at Takashimaya in Ngee Ann City and asked for the location of a nearby library.
The unemployed man claimed that he was a psychiatrist and asked her about her health and relationship problems.
The woman, a sales executive, followed him to his car.
On the pretext of 'checking' her health, he stopped the car along Raffles Avenue near a bus stop, lowered her seat and felt her thighs with his hands. He then continued to molest her.
Mohamed Raffi then dropped her off at City Hall MRT station, saying he would buy some medicine for her the next day.
The following day, he met her and drove to a Geylang hotel to book a room, but the woman got suspicious and left.
She went to the Central Police Station and reported that she had been molested the previous evening.
Mohamed Raffi, a married man with two children, was found guilty by District Judge Mavis Chionh on Monday of outraging the woman's modesty along Raffles Avenue at 10.30 pm on May 21 last year.
She sentenced him to two years in jail and six strokes of the cane.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Benjamin Yim said Mohamed Raffi was jailed nine months and received three strokes in 1995 for a similar offence.
Copyright © 2002 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.
Corpun file 8775 at www.corpun.com
The Straits Times, Singapore, 20 March 2002
Serial condo burglar gets 14 years' detention
Lum Yew Leong, whose loot was almost $500,000, is also given the maximum of 24 strokes of the cane
By Elena Chong
Court CorrespondentHE WAS a serial burglar who broke into condominiums all over the island and carted off property worth almost half a million dollars.
Lum Yew Leong, 37, was sentenced to 14 years' preventive detention yesterday.
And because he was a repeat offender, District Judge Seng Kwang Boon ordered that he be given six strokes of the cane for each of the eight housebreaking and theft charges.
This adds up to 48 strokes, but Lum will be given only 24, the maximum allowed by law.
He was last given a six-year jail term in 1994 for committing a series of burglaries.
This time round, he broke into 72 condominium apartments last year.
He pleaded guilty last month to eight charges of break-in and theft at Clementi Park, The Anchorage, Trevose Park, Parc Palais, Park West and Amber Gardens.
The court had postponed sentencing until yesterday, after calling for a preventive detention report.
Preventive detention is usually given to hard-core criminals in order to protect the public from them.
The criminals get no remission for good behaviour.
Lum, who had 63 charges considered, was arrested at Sunset Way on Dec 6, after he broke into two flats in Clementi Park and got away with $700.
In two other cases, he broke into two flats in Trevose Park, in Trevose Crescent, in January last year.
He stole expensive watches, jewellery and cash amounting to $97,400.
The loot he got from burgling the other condominiums ranged from a fake $50 Rolex watch to assorted jewellery totalling $79,878.
The unemployed man would take a taxi to the condominiums, walk around and look for potential targets.
Then he would knock on the doors.
If no one answered, he would then use screwdrivers he kept in his waist pouch to prise open the doors.
He converted the stolen jewellery and Rolex watches into cash on various gambling vessels in Indonesia, and used the money to repay his loans, daily expenses and to gamble.
The police managed to recover only the fake Rolex watch and $700.
Copyright © 2002 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.
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